Sharing our Holiday Family Traditions of Giving to make the holidays a more meaningful time of year. Take Giving Tuesday up a level for a month of giving.
It’s no secret that the holidays are my favorite time of year. I love decorating, baking, gifting and just spending more quality time with my family. One of the things I look forward to every year are the holiday family traditions of giving. We try to teach our kids to serve others throughout the year, but really up our game around the holidays because I want less fortunate to enjoy the holidays as much as I do. To help inspire you and your families to get in the spirit of Giving this Giving Tuesday, I want to share some of our family traditions and other ways we’re serving this year.
As a family we do the common “bake a plate of goodies” and take it to someone who may need cheering, but we also find families in our community who need more than just cheering. We “adopt” a family, or we adopt several single ladies from church, and we anonymously drop off a variety of gifts throughout December. We may take toys, warm socks, books, or something to warm their belly. We’ve even taken Christmas trees. The kids have fun getting to “doorbell ditch” and leave the gifts on people’s doorsteps. It’s a fun way to involve the family in the spirit of giving.
We make a regular habit of donating clothes we’ve outgrown, or other household items, to people who need them more than we do. This is something that’s easy for everyone to do. Instead of throwing things in the garbage – donate them if they’re still in good shape!
Another thing we do as a family is create little bags to put in our car and hand out to the homeless, or people on street corners with signs. We often get a dentist to donate toothbrushes and small tubes of toothpaste, then we include a couple of snacks like nuts, plus a couple of dollars in quarters. The grab bags are a nice and easy way to give, without just handing out a bunch of money.
- A couple of quick and small holiday family traditions of giving include:
- Going through a drive thru and paying for the car behind us
- Buying a candy bar for the cashier checking out my groceries
- Offering to help elderly with their groceries
- Visiting retirement homes and playing the piano, or singing for the residents
This year, our family has assisted in some bigger scale service projects and it’s been very rewarding. Some ladies from our church head up different projects and get families involved to assist. One project is The Purse Project. People donate gently used purses plus items to fill them, such as warm socks, chapstick, toiletries, feminine products and much more. Then we gather together and fill the purses with the items, and they then get donated to women in the community who are homeless or in dire need.
Another friend heads up a project called the Magic Yarn Project and she’s so great about getting the kids involved. She had my daughter and some of her friends help, and what they do is make fun yarn wigs for kids battling cancer. These wigs will usually resemble different Disney characters such as Rapunzel, Jasmine or even Captain Jack Sparrow.
There are so many ways to give back to the community and Giving Tuesday is a great place to start. It’s so fun when brands we know and love get into the spirit of giving, and T-Mobile is one of those brands. This year, T–Mobile set aside more than $2 million dollars for Giving Tuesday. Beyond that, they’ve asked everyone (and yes, even Verizon and AT&T customers) to decide where that money goes! They’re making it easy for everyone to participating in Giving Tuesday! Join me and T-Mobile by giving today, in the following ways:
If you’re a T–Mobile customer: On Giving Tuesday (11/27) via the TMT app, customers will get the chance to give $1 on us to Feeding America ($1=10 meals) — plus, you can text-to-give as well. You will also get the chance to win a gift code you can use donate to your favorite charity.
Everyone: Every time you retweet @TMobile’s Giving Tuesday tweet on 11/27, T–Mobile will donate $1 (10 meals) to Feeding America.
T–Mobile Employees: On Giving Tuesday, T–Mobile will deposit $27 in every T–Mobile employees Giving Account which they can donate to any charity of their choice. T–Mobile will match any additional donations on behalf of employees.
T-Mobile doesn’t just use today to give, but throughout the year they support programs for disaster relief, youth education, sustainability, hunger in America and more!
I hope you’ll join me this season and not just receive, but give to those who cannot do for themselves. Get on Twitter and retweet, and comment below with some of your family holiday traditions of giving!
This post is sponsored by T–Mobile.
I love this so much! We give back every year by donating our unused items that are in really good condition as well as food items before Christmas comes. It’s our way of giving back and sharing what we’ve been blessed with.
I want to have my kids do the ding dong ditch with a plate of goodies! Thanks for the suggestion.
I think it is awesome that your family does so much to give to those in need. I try to do what I can. I have already started collecting clothing and other items we don’t use to donate. I also buy a couple of gifts for the Salvation Army Angel Tree.
The Salvation Army Angel Tree is another great idea! Thanks for sharing!
our kids will love it, Rachel!
That’s so great, Stacie!
This is such a wonderful tradition. It helps the kids to presure what they have and educate to be more kind with each other! Thank you for that!
This is great! Such an amazing tradition to pass on to your family!